Finance giant lashed again for sending unstoppable spam
A financial services giant has been fined millions of dollars for repeatedly violating spam laws, including promoting credit cards without giving buyers the ability to opt out.
Latitude Financial was forced to pay $3.96 million after the Australian Communications and Media Authority found it had breached the law more than 2.7 million times, the regulator said on Wednesday.
Between March 2024 and April 2025, the company sent more than 2.3 million spam messages that did not contain the company’s accurate contact information, as required by law.
344,416 of these messages also did not have a working unsubscribe function.
Latitude, Australia’s largest non-bank consumer finance company, had to pay a $1.5 million fine for similar breaches in 2022.
Authority member Samantha Yorke said there was no excuse for Latitude’s repeated compliance failures, as reflected by the scale of the latest fine.
“Latitude is now a double offender and it is disappointing that it has failed consumers again,” Ms Yorke said.
Messages promoting Latitude credit card products and financial services told recipients they could reply ‘STOP’ to unsubscribe, but in many cases this function did not work.
Under Australian law, consumers must have the option to unsubscribe from commercial messages, which must also provide accurate contact details of the sender.
Latitude is now legally required to appoint an independent consultant to review its compliance with spam laws and provide regular and comprehensive reporting to its contact authority.
“Given Latitude’s history of non-compliance, we will be monitoring very closely how it meets its obligations,” Ms Yorke said.
In March 2023, Latitude was the target of a major cyberattack in which 7.9 million customers’ data was stolen, including names, addresses, phone numbers, dates of birth and driver’s license numbers.
Income and expense information for approximately 900,000 loan applications, including bank and credit card account information, was also stolen.
A $1 million lawsuit filed against the company by a person who claimed his information ended up on the dark web following the breach was dismissed after a judge found the case had little chance of success.
Latitude declined to comment before the sentence was made public.
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